Saturday, July 21, 2012

Vital Viewing: The Sentinel (1977)

Review by Marie Robinson

Greetings, horror lovers! I’m going to tell you all about a movie
that if you haven’t seen, you must. It isn’t very well known among my
generation, some people my age know only of the horror movies that rely
on sound cues and jump-scares. They don’t know about the golden era of
horror, the 1970’s, when the films were original and the scares were
real.
This is a movie that can keep you up at night, cowering beneath
your covers; a movie that can make you scream out loud not because of
the deafening slam of piano keys, but by a figure walking out in
complete silence. This is a movie that will make you cringe, giggle,
gasp, and applaud by its end. This, my friends, is The Sentinel.

"What's up with the priest upstairs?"

Michael
Winner directed this beloved film of mine, based on the novel by
Jeffrey Konvitz, who lent his hand to write the script, as well. It
stars the beautiful Cristina Raines as Alison Parker, a model with a
tragic past who is looking to get a place of her own in Brooklyn. As she
arrives to take a tour of an apartment building, the first thing she
notices is a man staring out of the top window. The landlady tells her
that it is just an old priest, who happens to gaze out of windows
although he is blind.

Black and white cat, black and white cake!

Alison takes the apartment but of course
all is not as it seems. The first turn-off is the cast of kooky
neighbors, including an all too friendly old man who carries a yellow
parakeet on his shoulder named Mortimer, and a cat named Jezebel in his
arms. Then of course, there are the hospitable lesbians downstairs who
insist on walking around in leotards. If that isn’t enough to make her
uneasy, at night she is plagued by vivid nightmares, only to wake up to
the sound of heavy footfalls in the empty apartment above her.

Her
health begins to fail as well. Alison succumbs to frequent fainting
spells, she becomes flighty and nervous. Things really take a turn for
her sanity when one night she braves the hallways of the brownstone to
seek out what is causing the noise night after night. What she finds is
more horrifying than she could ever expect.

The beautiful Cristina Raines as Alison

Something is
certainly not right with this place; something sinister resides there.
Is poor Alison just the unlucky soul who happened upon this hellish
place, or is there, perhaps, a reason she resides there?

“So,
what’s so great about this movie, anyway?” You Sentinel virgins might
well ask. The obvious answer is because it is awesome, but I guess I’ll
go ahead and give you the specifics.
First of all, it is from a time when horror films still valued a storyline. Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of scares, a decent amount of blood, and a
handful of 70’s boobs, but a solid storyline is what makes The Sentinel
the masterpiece that it is.

The atmosphere is set more by the
characters than the setting, for the apartment itself is gorgeous. I
mean, that is why Alison picks it; a well-off model like herself isn’t
going to go out and pick a cheap, spooky-ass flat. However, the
beautiful brownstone undergoes a supernatural makeover when the sun goes
down. That’s when the chandeliers start to swing and the specters come
out.

The characters (and actors) are really what give the film
its unique bizarreness. Okay, the guy who plays Alison’s boyfriend
really, really sucks, but the rest of them do just a stellar job.
Christina Raines perfectly captures the peculiar emotions one must have
to go through in a situation like this.

Speaking of actors, near the end of the film a whole new cast of characters is introduced—a pack
of demons—which happened to be portrayed by actual deformed people.
Michael Winner caught some heat once this was discovered, but if you get
over that little fact I think it definitely adds a quirk to this
already weird film. You can’t deny that the scene when all the “demons”
appear is terrifying, and is certainly something you will remember about
the movie, especially after knowing the disturbing truth behind it.

The
film surely has its moments, the climax being one of them, but the
whole reason I first came to know of this film was because it was
featured on Bravo’s 100 Scariest Movie Moments (it was ranked at #46).
The scene they featured was horrifying on its own, and I knew just from
seeing the clip that I had to see the whole thing, and even though I’ve
seen the film several times, that particular scene still gives me
gooseflesh!

This was one of Chris Sarandon's first roles, also Christopher Walken does one of his first performances.

That scene with the ghost is pretty spooky, I liked how dark and scary that sequence is when she's all alone in the apartment and things start moving about.

Agree with you, the weird characters are what make give this one that weird vibe, like an unsettling feeling that something is just not quite right. A classic, I love how it relies on genuine scares done practically and not on special effects.

Exactly! Oh, yes, I meant to mention that about Christopher Walken! He looks so much the same and only has about two lines, but it made me laugh to see him. Also, Jeff Goldblum has a small speaking role as Alison's photographer!!

Shocks are so much better absorbed with the knees bent...

We Wrote That:

*Christine Hadden is the creator, editor, and head writer of the Rondo-nominated blog Fascination with Fear and has been an obsessed horror fan for longer than many of her readers have been alive. She can overlook movie plot holes in exchange for style and atmosphere, rejects both the 3D and found footage phenomenons, values high gore content when done right, always prefers practical effects over CGI, and has an undying love of vampires. She considers Norman Bates her homeboy and claims Jaws as her favorite film. She has written for Fangoria and Paracinema magazines, MoviePilot, and Eli Roth's horror app The Crypt. She enjoys Kentucky bourbon and red, red wine. But not together.

Contributing Writer

*Marie Robinson is an aspiring folklore expert, published writer, and obvious old soul from St. Louis, MO. She considers Roman Polanski one of her favorite directors, The Sentinel among the scariest of films she's seen, and has read both Algernon Blackwood and M.R. James - making her wise beyond her years. In her spare time, she enjoys wandering through misty cemeteries, seeking knowledge and proof of paranormal activity, and prepping her next frightening short story. Besides Fascination with Fear, she contributes to Destroy the Brain and has written for Eli Roth's horror app: The Crypt.